Input on touring plan pretty please!

[TamiRuns]

Disney experts -

We are taking the boys to WDW for the first time this May!! :cheerleader1:

And I'm stressin'....we are newbies - dh has never been to WDW and I was there when I was 3 - which doesn't count.

I've lurked on the disboards for the past few years so I have read quite a bit. Also have the Unofficial Guide and joined touringplans. com. (For a type A person like me this is awesome!) I'm getting a bit hung up on the crowd tracker though. There wasn't a good day at MK until 4 or 5 days into our trip and there is NO way we weren't going to MK within the first few days!

A few questions....we are going for 9 days - arriving in the early morning (5/18) and departing around 1:00pm-ish on 5/26.

How does this plan look?

Day 1: arrive 9:00am-ish. Check into condo (if ready) and then go to DTD for lunch and to explore.

Day 2: MK (not a great day "8" something based on touringplan.com but want to get there!)

Day 3: Epcot

Day 4: DHS

Day 5: REST (see questions below)

Day 6: MK (this is a great day based on touringplan.com)

Day 7: AK

Day 8: Favorite - let kids decide

Day 9: Unsure...DTD for souveniors or maybe schedule character breakfast? (plane leaves at 1:00)

1) Do we have a "rest" day where we do no parks and hang by the pool? (We are staying at Bonnet Creek and they have a pretty nice kids pool, I guess.)

2) What do you do on a "rest" day besides swim?

3) Tickets....not sure how many days to get. I feel confident we'll go to the parks at least 6 of those days if we take a day off to "rest" and dont do a park on arrival or departure day. Thoughts?

4) What about the hopper option? I'm thinking no, the more I read.

Thanks!! I appreciate the input and will no doubt have many more questions!!

[crl]

Well, we went over Thanksgiving 2010. I didn't do the crowd tracker thing, but I'm pretty sure nearly every day was a high crowd day and we still had a great time. So I wouldn't worry too much about it. It sounds to me like you've got a solid plan. We did not do a rest day; we did five straight days in the parks with a seven month old and a seven year old. But I took the afternoons off with dd back at the hotel and the boys went to the water park or to Downtown Disney (their favorite thing was the water park, btw).

We did not get the park hopper option. We went with the water park option and you can do a regular park and the water park on the same day (or at least you could when we went.). We were perfectly happy without park hoppers. I can see those for families with older kids who might want to start the day at MK and end at Epcot for the food, but transportation between the parks chews up enough time that we weren't interested in jumping around.

My main advice is to get to the park at rope drop (or before) and to utilize fast passes. We did really well with both of those and I think it made all the difference in getting on rides and not waiting in line a ton even though it was really busy while we were there.

Catherine

[TamiRuns]

Well, we went over Thanksgiving 2010. I didn't do the crowd tracker thing, but I'm pretty sure nearly every day was a high crowd day and we still had a great time. So I wouldn't worry too much about it. It sounds to me like you've got a solid plan. We did not do a rest day; we did five straight days in the parks with a seven month old and a seven year old. But I took the afternoons off with dd back at the hotel and the boys went to the water park or to Downtown Disney (their favorite thing was the water park, btw).

We did not get the park hopper option. We went with the water park option and you can do a regular park and the water park on the same day (or at least you could when we went.). We were perfectly happy without park hoppers. I can see those for families with older kids who might want to start the day at MK and end at Epcot for the food, but transportation between the parks chews up enough time that we weren't interested in jumping around.

My main advice is to get to the park at rope drop (or before) and to utilize fast passes. We did really well with both of those and I think it made all the difference in getting on rides and not waiting in line a ton even though it was really busy while we were there.

Catherine

Thanks for the input, Catherine.

It seems the the one thing I hear everyone say is "get to the parks early." That shouldn't be a problem since the boys are always up early. I'm hoping to minimize the wait time as much as possible, just like everyone else.

Since our condo has a nice pool and slides with water play area, I think we're going to skip the waterparks. However, I haven't finalized our plans yet so that may change...

[fivi2]

The last time we went, my girls were 4.5. We didn't do a rest day, but we scheduled a lot of down time. We typically went to the parks at rope drop and then left early to mid afternoon and went to the pool. I think we only went back to the parks on one night (we would probably go back more now that they are older). Most days we stayed at the pool, ate dinner, and then put the girls to bed. We were in a cabin at Ft. Wilderness and explored the property some.

We planned two Epcot days - one we went at rope drop and did the front part, the second EP day we slept in and went around lunch to tour the countries. (we planned to sleep in - the girls wouldn't so we did a last minute character brunch that morning).

We haven't done park hoppers, but might next time as the girls are older - I like the idea of taking an afternoon break and then maybe going to a different park in the evening. We have never done DHS. AK is usually a short day for us, but we like the park. We have never done water parks (I don't like them). And we have never been to dtd.

You might want to schedule a hotel character dinner (or hoop de doo) on arrival night. OR - tickets are cheap enough to add days once you get past 5 or so days, that I might actually buy enough days to go to MK that first day. We usually go to MK on our first day to do the non rope drop looking at castle and wandering around stuff. On our first rope drop MK day, we like to march straight to the first ride without dawdling, so doing a day of just wandering around without a set plan is nice. (mine haven't been old enough to care about a specific ride that first day, so long lines weren't an issue. You could look at the castle, see a parade, do the train or tom sawyer's island, etc). Then you could bump your MK rope drop morning to a better day.

We (I) like to plan, but also have back ups. One trip my girls would only ride certain slow rides and no dark rides, which we didn't know until we got there. So a lot of plans went out the window... They love characters and we'd have to wait to see a character. So it is good to have a plan, but also know the general rules about which rides are good at which time of day.

Also - pay attention to late nights and rope drops. From what I hear, you need to be at dhs for rope drop for TSMM and the jedi thing. You have your only EP day the day before - if you stay for illuminations, you'll be exhausted the next morning at DHS.

Rope drops are important!!

Have fun :)

[fivi2]

sorry for the essay -

on a down day you could do a non park character breakfast, explore the other resorts (not the pools), explore the campground, etc. Some of the resorts show movies outdoors in the evenings. The campground has a campfire with Chip and Dale and you can watch the fireworks from the beach. So you could do the early Hoop de doo and then some of the other stuff.

Although - you are staying off site so I don't know if all of that is open to you... I don't think they check.

Or, if you go to MK that first afternoon, you could do pool plus DTD on your rest day...

[alien_host]

We've been twice and DD was 5 and 6. We stay 6 nights and have 5 days in the parks since our arrival and departure usually are late afternoon/noon respectively. We don't do a rest day but do go back in the afternoon to swim, get cleaned up for dinner.

We typically only return to the park our last night. She usually is too tired other nights and we just have her go to bed. We do not park hop.

Our first trip I felt strongly about having MK on our first park day and I personally did not want it to be a few hours in the afternoon, but fivi2 does have a good suggestion since you get in early.

I think they also have minature golf ( near dolphin/swan?)

Someone else might know more, but you might be able to add on days to your tickets. After the 5 th day, each additional day is pretty cheap, I don't know the pricing but it used to be $3 or 5 per person for the 6 th/7 th etc.

The first year we did MK x 3 epcot, dhs, we skipped AK because DD loved MK so much. Last year we did MK x 2 and each of the other parks one day.

We skipped DTD our first time, but went on our arrival night last year and i think we kept DD up too late!

Have fun!

[TamiRuns]

sorry for the essay -

on a down day you could do a non park character breakfast, explore the other resorts (not the pools), explore the campground, etc. Some of the resorts show movies outdoors in the evenings. The campground has a campfire with Chip and Dale and you can watch the fireworks from the beach. So you could do the early Hoop de doo and then some of the other stuff.

Although - you are staying off site so I don't know if all of that is open to you... I don't think they check.

Or, if you go to MK that first afternoon, you could do pool plus DTD on your rest day...

I appreciate both of your posts! Lots of good points...

I'm shying away from a park the first day simply b/c the boys are going to be exhausted from the travel. Our flight is going to be at 6:30 AM! We will be waking them at 4:30...cant even stand to think about it! So no parks the first day. I was thinking DTD, back to condo to relax and hopefully get a good nights sleep.

I might be in the minority but we are not going to make plans around fireworks and evening events. My boys have an early bedtime and don't do well later in the evening. Seriously, we make them stay up on the 4th of July and they are practically begging to go to bed! So we'll see how the days go and see what evening events they are up for...

I like your suggestion to have back up plans....I want to be flexible, see what the boys love and go with it...

Thanks!

[TamiRuns]

We've been twice and DD was 5 and 6. We stay 6 nights and have 5 days in the parks since our arrival and departure usually are late afternoon/noon respectively. We don't do a rest day but do go back in the afternoon to swim, get cleaned up for dinner.

We typically only return to the park our last night. She usually is too tired other nights and we just have her go to bed. We do not park hop.

Our first trip I felt strongly about having MK on our first park day and I personally did not want it to be a few hours in the afternoon, but fivi2 does have a good suggestion since you get in early.

I think they also have minature golf ( near dolphin/swan?)

Someone else might know more, but you might be able to add on days to your tickets. After the 5 th day, each additional day is pretty cheap, I don't know the pricing but it used to be $3 or 5 per person for the 6 th/7 th etc.

The first year we did MK x 3 epcot, dhs, we skipped AK because DD loved MK so much. Last year we did MK x 2 and each of the other parks one day.

We skipped DTD our first time, but went on our arrival night last year and i think we kept DD up too late!

Have fun!

Thanks! Good suggestions. I remember reading that there's a few really cool mini golf places. It might be something different and fun on a nonpark day.

I wouldn't be opposed to visiting MK x 3 if the boys love it. I want to do what they love but obviously won't know what that is until we're there. So I'll go armed with a plan but be flexible!

[billysmommy]

You can add days on to your tickets at any time while you are there so if you end up deciding you want to go to the parks for a little on your down day or on your arrival/departure day you can. Once you're past 4 days, the difference per day is ~$8.00/per ticket. So once you have 7 day tickets, for $32 you can add an 8th day onto all the tickets.

We've done this a couple of trips when we weren't as tired as we thought we would be on our down day and ended up wanting to go to the parks after all.

You'll do fine without the Hoppers also, especially with staying at Bonnet Creek and early bedtimes. We've always gotten the hoppers since we like to stay at the Boardwalk. We go to one park at rope drop until mid-afternoon when we go back to the hotel for a break (nap or swimming). Then we walk over to Epcot for dinner and drinks and sometimes more rides and fireworks if the boys napped that day. We typically do dinner in Epcot every night since DH and I are really looking forward to a cocktail by then, especially if we've spent the day at MK which is dry ;)
If we stayed off-site or at a resort where we weren't able to walk back at closing, we wouldn't do the Hoppers but it is worth it for us staying right there.

[DrSally]

One thing we did that i would recommend, is to schedule AK before and or after a day at MK. Ak is great, we loved it, and it closes at 8 pm. So, i f you want to stay at MK late for the parade fireworks, the next day won't be so late. On our rest days -- we had 2 out of 7, we went to the ocean. It ,ight be too cold at this time of year, though.

[spunkybaby]

Have you looked at the crowd calendars at www.easywdw.com. I really liked the explanations there and preferred them to touringplans.com

From a quick scan of your itinerary, I would flip-flop Days 4 & 5. DHS will be much less crowded on Day 5. Most of the parks look busy on Day 4, so you might as well rest that day instead.

Is your family interested in Star Wars? If so, DHS is hosting Star Wars weekends, and Josh at easyWDW recommends going on a Sunday (the least crowded of an extremely crowded weekend).

I don't think you need the hopper tickets, especially since you are planning to go back early each night to put the kids to bed. We had hoppers in early December and used them quite a bit, but WDW is huge, and hopping from park to park takes a long time. You can always add the hoppers at the park if you decide you need them--no need to buy them now.

I would suggest posting on the easyWDW boards for itinerary/touring plan help. The boards there are much smaller than the DIS boards but easier to navigate, and the experts there are very friendly and helpful.

Have fun!

[spunkybaby]

Also - pay attention to late nights and rope drops. From what I hear, you need to be at dhs for rope drop for TSMM and the jedi thing.

I have heard that you need to be super early for TSMM and the Jedi Academy (at the easyWDW boards, they talk about being early enough to be "belly-up" to the rope, that is, at the front of the rope drop crowd). I would imagine this is especially true for Star Wars Weekends.

[TamiRuns]

Have you looked at the crowd calendars at www.easywdw.com. I really liked the explanations there and preferred them to touringplans.com

From a quick scan of your itinerary, I would flip-flop Days 4 & 5. DHS will be much less crowded on Day 5. Most of the parks look busy on Day 4, so you might as well rest that day instead.

Is your family interested in Star Wars? If so, DHS is hosting Star Wars weekends, and Josh at easyWDW recommends going on a Sunday (the least crowded of an extremely crowded weekend).

I don't think you need the hopper tickets, especially since you are planning to go back early each night to put the kids to bed. We had hoppers in early December and used them quite a bit, but WDW is huge, and hopping from park to park takes a long time. You can always add the hoppers at the park if you decide you need them--no need to buy them now.

I would suggest posting on the easyWDW boards for itinerary/touring plan help. The boards there are much smaller than the DIS boards but easier to navigate, and the experts there are very friendly and helpful.

Have fun!

Thanks for the link. I had seen that calendar before but didn't check my dates once i joined touring plan. I'll have to compare and maybe rethink. Also, I'll take a look at the boards. As I mentioned, I find disboards a bit intimidating.

[TamiRuns]

I have heard that you need to be super early for TSMM and the Jedi Academy (at the easyWDW boards, they talk about being early enough to be "belly-up" to the rope, that is, at the front of the rope drop crowd). I would imagine this is especially true for Star Wars Weekends.

Our oldest is a Star Wars fan and would love the Jedi training....so definitely want to give it a try. Recurring theme is show up early....

[KHF]

For us, park hoppers are a necessity. We went to AK one day and it was so unbearably crowded and hot that we left by 12:00. We ended up going to the MK after that and having a lovely day. We hopped parks on several days (we went in December). For me, I would never consider getting non-hopper passes. That's just us though. It gives a level of flexibility that you don't otherwise have.

I also have kids with early bedtimes (8:00). We thought we would go back mid-day for my son's nap and rest, but it ended up working best for them just to do the parks all day, no return to the hotel (we were in the Treehouse Villas at Saratoga, so on property, but pretty far out). DS napped many afternoons in his stroller. Then we would head back about 6-7 in the evening.

The first day we arrived, we got to MK at about 3:00. We stayed that night to see Wishes, since we had a 6:00 ressie at Crystal Palace. Those were the only fireworks we saw all week. We also lucked out and got a front row seat outside Pecos Bill's for the Electric Parade. That was the only night it was running while we were there, and both of my DC loved it.

Try really hard to get fast passes for Toy Story Mania. My DH was at the rope at rope drop and we got passes pretty early. It was an *awesome* ride, well worth the effort :) My kids both loved it (3 and 6).